Extending your school's ICT to your community

Introduction

A practical toolkit for schools, this guide describes a variety of ways that schools can extend ICT into their community and provides a step-by-step guide to getting started. It complements the extended schools guidance available on the main Extended Schools section and in a booklet Extended schools — providing opportunities and services for all available to order.

ICT, by its versatility and ubiquitous presence in contemporary culture, has a special place in extending schools' community provision, as it:

Is a very live topic in the community
Can be of interest to all age groups
Gives opportunities for families to work together
Vitalises basic skills learning
Allows many special needs of learners to be catered for, or even served exceptionally well
Offers special possibilities for revising cross-generational relationships
Has many 'ways in' that are motivating to different groups
Supports many different subjects, topics and enthusiasms
Addresses the needs of many deprived groups
Opens opportunities for employment.

Click here for examples of some extended schools' ICT activities.

St Marks 2 - © D Perry

A 'Roboteer' in the BBC Family Robots scheme

There are many case studies included in this guidance and these have been drawn from a number of contexts. Some schools have been very innovative already, not least specialist schools which have had a responsibility to extend their benefits to their communities for some years. The UK online scheme funded by the Department and New Opportunities Fund has also prompted considerable innovation in ICT-related adult and pre-school learning, as have other initiatives such as Education Action Zones and Excellence in Cities. All of these have sought to exploit the powerful, positive effects that come from increasing the integration of schools into their community for the benefit of all, using their ICT facilities, knowledge and expertise.

Throughout this area of the site there are links to further information on many of the key topics, some of which are internal to this site, while some take you to other sites. Other parts of the guidance consist of checklists to help schools ensure that they have considered the many aspects necessary as they plan an ICT extension initiative.

Despite so much good work in this area already there is still room for much innovation to suit the constraints and needs of individual communities. This guidance will therefore develop in time, as more schools embark on using ICT to extend their school provision, and further success stories can be anticipated for some time to come.

If you have a story to tell, about ICT extending your school's community value, that other schools might benefit from submit it here.

Acknowledgements

These guidance materials were commissioned by Becta, on behalf of the Department. The main body of text was written by David Perry. Many thanks to the e-Learning Foundation and to the Specialist Schools Trust for their help in providing the case studies which supplement these materials.